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Friday, 7 March 2014

FANCIFUL OPENING OF KING’S AIRPORT

King Mswati III of Swaziland said that one day planes will
land at the newly-opened Sikhuphe Airport at a rate of one per second.

He was making a speech at the opening ceremony for the
airport, dubbed by critics as a ‘vanity project’ for King Mswati, who rules
Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

To date, no airlines have signed up to use the airport which
has been built in the wilderness of eastern Swaziland, about 80km from the
kingdom’s capital Mbabane. It is not clear when the first commercial flight
will use Sikhuphe.

Sikhuphe which has cost an estimated E3 billion (US$300
million) so far to build was opened four years behind schedule. Originally the
cost of construction was expected to be E500 million.

In the past
few weeks allegations of corruption in the awarding of contracts have surfaced.

King Mswati said Sikhuphe was a ‘First World facility’. This
was in reference to his stated aim to make Swaziland a ‘First World’ nation by
2022. At present 70 percent of King Mswati’s 1.3 million subjects live in
abject poverty, earning less than US$2 a day. Swaziland also has the highest
rate of HIV infection in the world. In 2003, the International
Monetary Fund said Sikhuphe should not be built because it
would divert funds away from much needed projects to fight poverty in
Swaziland.

King Mswati said the airport was not an extravagance but
important development infrastructure.

However, there
are doubts that the airport is fit-for-purpose. In June 2013 an engineer’s report was published by
to the Mail and Guardian newspaper in
South Africa saying the structure of the airport was defected and large
jet airlines would not be able to land,

There are also doubts about the size of the passenger terminal. One
estimate suggested it might
take a passenger landing at Sikhuphe two hours to get through the terminal.
This was based on official figures from the Swaziland Civil Aviation Authority
(SWACAA ) that said the terminal would be able handle and process about 300
passengers per hour: which is roughly half the number of passengers on a
fully-laden Boeing 777 plane.